A Voyage Long and Strange
by mmmmmm00
Summary: Before the events of TFA, the Finalizer mysteriously went back in time to just before the Battle of Yavin. Now the Rebellion has been smashed to pieces, but Hux has fallen out with the Empire, and Kylo Ren is missing. Now on the run, Hux must rely on himself while compelling the cooperation of his prisoner, fleeing into the Unknown Regions to recoup and plot his return. Kylux.
1. Chapter 1

NOT a Hux/OFC fic, it's KYLUX and it will always be KYLUX. The OC just happens to be a woman.

This kind of just popped into my head and I wrote it very quickly.

I wanted to write a story about people falling into their PS2s (or, er, 4s these days), but I hate the usual tropes associated with it as much as I love them, and time travel. Hahaha.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything, except the OC.

* * *

The prisoner scrambled up in a hurry from a dead sleep as Hux rushed into the cell, snatched her wrist, and gripped it tightly. She tried to pull away.

 _How the karking hell has she managed to_ sleep _through a_ space battle?! The ship wasn't quiet or still, even here, in the belly of the brig.

"I—What—"

" _Shut up_ ," Hux snapped, full in her face. "You will come with me and you will ask me no questions. Is that clear?"

"I—um— _What?_ " She could only struggle to keep up as he hauled her off the bench, and out of the cell. In one hand he held a blaster at the ready.

She stuck to asking no questions, somehow. Stars knew the wretched bitch never could help herself before.

 _They won't use incendiaries if you have her with you, if they've already boarded. They won't blow the ship. They want_ her _alive_. He yanked her along when she started to flag.

" _Move!_ " he snarled. "There's no time to waste."

Hux ran flat-footed down the gleaming, perfectly waxed and shined passageways and skidded into the turbolift, disturbing several shocked technicians who were running the other way. He neglected to tell them to give way to a superior officer; anyway, it wasn't as if rank aboard the _Finalizer_ would matter very much longer.

She was out of breath by the time they made it to the large hangar in the belly of the ship, where all was chaos. The klaxon suddenly blared to life, and the ship shivered and pitched violently under a sudden barrage, and they were sent skidding ass-over-end across the deck. Anything that was not tied down went with them. Then there was an enormously violent shudder. Something very large had exploded.

 _I should be up there, on the bridge_ , he thought bitterly. _I should have_ —

Hux crawled back on his feet and pulled the woman with him, dragging her towards Ren's command shuttle, which sat gleaming and abandoned since its primary user had vanished months ago. Now she seemed urgent to go wherever he was going, and he got no resistance.

 _Damn you, Ren. I could have kriffing used you!_ Maybe this wouldn't have happened with a powerful Force-user in his corner.

When all this began, he'd tried to openly convince Ren to stick with him, insisted in plain language that by presenting a united front they would be more credible, but Ren had insisted on going after Darth Vader and flinging himself at his feet.

That had gone tits-up just like everything else had.

Their last conversation in Hux's office still rotted in his ears with a sickly, infuriating irony.

Ren had faced him with his mask off and pleaded with Hux to come with him. To take the _Finalizer_ and her crew. To leave the Empire. None of it made sense and it came straight out of left field, and moreover it was utterly out of character for him, particularly after his reverence of Darth Vader and everything that had happened since that first conversation. At the time, Hux had had no idea what to make of it, and on top of that, with the distance he had now he was able to perceive that he had reacted badly.

Hell, even this reaction—this flight—was something he would not have considered mere weeks ago.

The worst part was, Hux couldn't even truly be surprised. He could feel hurt and betrayed (despite knowing how _stupid_ it was to feel that way), he might even be infuriated at having lost a power play or frustrated with himself for somehow thinking it wouldn't happen to him, but he could not rationally be surprised. That would be akin to saying his father was perfect—and he'd had his father murdered because he was a monster.

And in his way. That was the most important reason he had had his father murdered.

Hux pushed the woman into the copilot's seat, his hands flying over the console even before he had completely sat down. His override codes worked; only a handful of people in the First Order were authorized to pilot this ship.

She sat up and got herself situated, and leaned forward—

"Don't touch anything," he barked loudly, sparing little more than a glance in her direction as the ship came online, lights spreading out around them as a tinny whirring sound told him that the ion engines were starting up. "Sit back and _don't touch anything_. If I see you reaching for any of the controls, I will shoot you."

Her eyebrows jerked up on her forehead as she settled back in the seat, letting her bewildered gaze fall around the bay. If he had looked up from the control panel, he would have observed the scurrying techs, abandoned by their General, just as silent outside the solid wall of hull and viewport. The ship lifted off the deck with a faint jolt.

Hux did his best to ignore the awful knowledge that he hadn't been equal to the task of keeping this ship together and flying. It strained very old wounds. She opened her mouth as if to say something to him, but wisely thought better of it as Hux guided the ship to the mouth of the open bay, then gunned it, blasting out into open space hard enough to feel gravity resist them, until the shipboard equalizers took over and they could no longer feel the acceleration this far into cold space. He checked that he had raised shields twice.

When the course was laid in he cursed under his breath; he would need to turn the ship around to make the jump.

So he banked hard and seemed to head straight back towards the battle.

Hux heard her gasp, but his mind was elsewhere. Ahead of them was the blue-black arrowhead of the _Executor_ , looming enormously overhead, and beyond that the Death Star, impossibly large, while the other Star Destroyers that made up the Death Squadron and a scattering of other fleets filled the scene, like jagged white fangs.

The _Finalizer_ , though she was larger than any other Star Destroyer save the _Executor_ , appeared terribly small and alone, a frail bird in the jaws of a great beast.

She listed precariously while TIEs swirled like angry hornets around her, and escape pods jettisoned like bursts of confetti. That large explosion must have been the tower, because the area around the bridge was nothing more than a smoldering crater.

Ren's shuttle was equipped for stealth; that was its one advantage.

" _Oh_ ," she exhaled. Her voice trembled feebly in the midst of this storm, overwhelmed, tiny, and helpless beside him, her grasp on this life as fragile as the barrier that supported life inside this tiny pocket within an infinite vastness, sitting there uselessly. "Do you think they brought enough firepower…?"

Hux grit his teeth, sending her a malevolent warning glare. But this was all she said as a kind of comprehension dawned, even as her widened eyes took in the scene.

Hux didn't know if he could make it into hyperspace in time before they drew shots, but the window of opportunity was rapidly closing in any case. Somehow the hyperdrive lever was the longest reach and pull in his life. Seconds before, a light on the panel went off, flickering madly.

Nothing happened. The ship gave an unsteady lurch and the engines strained and whined in protest. The speed indicator gradually slowed, and Hux finally glanced at that blinking light. _A tractor beam_.

It was only a moment later that a communications request on the holo trilled through the little cabin; Hux only reluctantly opened the connection, as his mind still reeled. The prisoner just watched, one hand curled in her lap, the other clutching the arm rest with bone-white knuckles.

Tarkin, the smug bastard, gazed back in flickering blue hologram. Admiral Motti stood beside him, looking, as always, put out about everything and nothing.

"General Hux," Tarkin said crisply, applying his rank in as close a tone of mockery as he could get without openly thumbing his nose. _You were so insistent on him using it, too_. "Surrender and I shall overlook this intransigence."

Hux knew where this was going; his father had loved to tell him. In another setting he would have handed down the same punishment with an almost inappropriate level of satisfaction.

"Hand over the prisoner and your execution will be swift and painless."

 _If I believed that, someone might be able to talk me into beachfront property on Hoth_.

It was Tarkin's nearly invisible condescending little sneer that set him off, the way he looked at Hux as if he were lower than any life form he'd ever seen, after he had set Darth Vader on the _Finalizer_ like an attack garral.

"She is _my_ prisoner," Hux raged. "She has been in _my_ custody since the very beginning. You will not take her from me. The First Order will have vengeance!" His threat had no teeth and sounded pathetic, and he knew it, and that made him _angry_. Angry but impotent.

Hux reached for the target he _could_ punish. He gripped her scalp at the roots of her hair hard enough to make her yelp. Tarkin was _not_ as above petty cruelties as that mildly disgusted, nearly invisible flicker of distaste on his thin lips might have suggested, but the sight set Hux's nerves on edge.

"You'll never have her. I'll kill her myself before I let that happen."

He was aware on some level that that, too, sounded infantile, but it was difficult to not want to lord what little he had over Tarkin, to try and retain even the smallest bit of ground. He shoved her head away.

"You have no chance of victory, General. You are alone. The Rebellion has been utterly destroyed, and the _Finalizer_ is all that existed here of your precious First Order. Kylo Ren has vanished. There is no place to go now; nowhere that you can hide that the Empire will not find you."

Hux grit his teeth. He would not be taken alive and he would not be beaten, and he would not allow them to have what they had come for, and by so doing…

He would _earn_ his pyrrhic victory.

Without the _Finalizer_ he was even less than he had ever been. Its loss was a physical ache, like losing a limb. His beautiful ship spun in vacuum, a sparking, gouged-out hulk, the lights dead inside.

But he had the prisoner, and his life and freedom, and as long as he had them, he was ten steps ahead. He would use her to his best advantage, and he would obliterate the man in front of him, the Emperor, Darth Vader, and the Empire, which, though immensely powerful, was still corrupt and bloated and doddering, just like the Republic. He _would_ achieve victory…

 _Somehow_. It was his destiny to rule the galaxy, and he would.

 _He would_.

Somehow.

"I think you'll find I'm not such an easy target," Hux snapped back, and cut the transmission with a satisfyingly violent wrench of the dial. It felt really kriffing good to see that annoyed little twitch in Tarkin's face just an instant before the holo blinked out.

For four seconds there was silence in the ship as Hux laid out the first coordinates for the zig-zag series of jumps that would take him into the Unknown Regions, which were still wild and untamed in this era. The Fraga and Vandini, two particularly powerful enemies subjugated when Hux had been barely fifteen, would not welcome him. But he remembered just enough about the furthest reaches of the Unknown Regions in the early days that he should be alright, provided he could stay ahead of his pursuers long enough to catch his breath, and last long enough to get there. If they could follow him at all.

Lone assassins, however…

Not for the first, and almost certainly not for the last time, Hux experienced a frustrated spasm of exasperation with the Knight. Why couldn't Ren ever have seen sense? If Hux had known where he was, his next act would have been to send word to him, but…

Hux activated the shroud—a model of cloaking device with advanced capabilities which did not exist anywhere else in the galaxy in this time. Even the _Finalizer_ was not equipped with one, or escape would have been much easier once it became clear the ship was to be overwhelmed. The ones here would only work if it were activated before being hit with a tractor beam because it disrupted locking sensors, but could do nothing about something that had already been pinpointed. The ship's rumbling protests evened out, and the shuttle sailed out of its rigid trajectory.

Hux reached for the lever again.

The stars before them turned to streaks and then to a nebulous blue tunnel, and Hux finally sat back allowed himself the luxury of a moment with his eyes shut. They had escaped. They had yet to successfully develop hyperspace tracking, either, so they were truly escaped.

He let himself fall into planning mode with his eyes shut.

It was imperative to avoid Chiss space. If they detained him he would have a whole new list of problems. He would skirt that territory to reach Rakata Prime and slip between the Ascendancy and other, local hegemonies to the safety of the furthest regions of Unknown Space. He already spoke passable Sy Bisti and that would do well by him, but he might still remember enough Roḉ to get by.

"Guess that marriage didn't outlast the honeymoon." Her voice was soft and deadpan.

Hux reacted instantly, flinging himself up from the pilot's seat in an exceedingly rare loss of control. He grabbed her face by the jaw and pressed her back into her seat, using his greater height and strength against her, finding some security in that there was such a difference. With his slender frame, it wasn't a frequent reassurance. She didn't fight him, even though she was unbound and he could feel her holding herself rigidly. _I still have the blaster, too_.

"If I don't ask for your opinion, I don't want to hear your voice. Is that clear? You are still my prisoner. I am still the General of the First Order, and if you give me any trouble, then you will regret forcing my hand."

He shoved her away.

"Get up."

She hesitated, a wary incredulousness crossing her face. She muttered too quietly for him to hear that sounded suspiciously like ' _What_ First Order…'

"I strongly suggest that you cease testing my patience, scum. I do not need you in any other state than living, and that is a long way from whole. _Get up_."

She obeyed finally, if reluctantly. Hux grabbed her wrist and hauled her out of the cockpit. She could not read Aurebesh, or she couldn't the last time he checked, though that could easily have changed. As far as he knew she couldn't fly a ship, either—but what could she do, and what might she do? It wasn't worth the gamble that she might not be able to work something out.

She wouldn't go back to the Empire, would she?

No. She had no love for the Empire. But, thanks in part to him, there was no Rebellion, either…

He dragged her into the back of the shuttle and finally pulled out the stuncuffs he'd taken from the brig security office. She didn't fight him as he put one of her wrists in before locking her to a durasteel loop set half a meter off the deck into the bulkhead, meant for securing cargo. She sat down, and folded her legs to one side, breathing heavily and stiffly, keeping herself in check.

"Behave yourself, and maybe I'll feed you when we make planetfall."

She licked her lips, eying him narrowly with an intense sort of circumspection. Hux _hated_ it, but then she wasn't giving him a reason to lash out, aside from the fact that he couldn't stand the feeling of being analyzed. Closeness to his heart was something he could not stand. It laid bare everything about him, all his weaknesses, all his failings. He felt exposed and pathetic, and he wanted to hit her until she couldn't _look_ at him.

"May I ask how long that might be?" she asked. "Sir?" She held his gaze, steadily, and her voice, though submissive in its tone and volume, was still distinctly irritated. How could she be this calm while he was so worked up?

"You may not."

And he left her there.


	2. Chapter 2

Holy fuck I cannot wait to see SOLO.

* * *

Peavey had been a young man when the Death Star had been destroyed, just a few years shy of thirty. He couldn't remember quite when it happened now, but around that time he'd been busted down to Ensign for, um, repeated episodes involving sticking stars to his forehead and a particularly exaggerated caricature…

He'd seen a lot of shit since then, but if he were a betting man he'd _never_ have thought this would happen. Time travel?

Stars, even with the time travel of all the ridiculous mechanisms—

He felt absurdly like that Ensign all over again, young and terribly inexperienced. Who was he to go and negotiate with Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin?

Peavey was really, really hoping he kriffed up sometime _after_ this period.

Phasma stood beside him, silent and gleaming, but without her blaster rifle in the midst of their escort. He'd never exactly been fond of Hux's walking truncheon but her presence was somewhat reassuring, all things considered.

 _Don't get comfortable. She'll kill you if it's necessary for her survival_.

There was something achingly familiar, and yet horrifyingly alien about the passageways they passed through, at a clip, without any of the overweening pomp Hux would no doubt have affected. Once, passageways like this would have been comfortable, he one of the millions passing through to their place in this great interlocking mechanism. He saw little things out of place or out of regs, heard familiar commands that he could place himself immediately within this world—

But he _wasn't_ part of it anymore, not really. It was almost like sitting on the sidelines of a play one has already seen, aware of the fault lines, but surrounded on all sides by those who have only read reviews or not seen it yet, but they've already formed opinions.

But _Tarkin_.

The man was a legend stretching back more than twenty years, even here and now. People used to joke that he babysat the entire Imperial military and after he died with the Death Star, particularly with the then-recent loss of Grand Admiral Thrawn, there went the adult in the room. The man overshadowed the whole of the Imperial military, he overshadowed history as far back as the Clone Wars, and all who came after would be nothing more than his progressively paler imitation.

The stars only knew what was about to happen, with the _Finalizer_ derelict and her surviving crew being offloaded.


	3. Chapter 3

Hux has been portrayed as incompetent by view of those around him and basically turned into a slapstick target, but also, in the TLJ novelization, that man is calculating as fuck. He's _not_ stupid. I will not rant about why Hux wasn't a good strategist in TFA and just continued the trend in TLJ, I will not rant...

But he's not stupid. No. I will never accept that. He just got shit on during his No Good, Very Bad Day. General Ginger _snaps_ in episode 9, I predict...

The OC? Remember when I mentioned that falling-into-the-PS2 trick? I always worry I'm verging on Mary Sueness. I really don't mean for her to upstage Hux. I hope she doesn't come off like she is. She's not controlling a damn thing, in this story. She's simply more like...one of the rest of the characters. Or that's where I meant to go with this. You guys be the judge.

Also, god damn it, now I miss Poe Dameron. My other major ship is Gingerpilot, so, uh, LOL. Klyuxeron? Poluxren? Oh God. What's the OT3 portmanteau. Not planning on OT3 right now, though, lol.

"Fearless Leader" is apparently a character from Rocky and Bullwinkle. I'm not *that* old but it was on the TV more when I was a kid, lol.

Still don't own shiiiiiiit. Well, except for the OC. Fat lot of good that does me; I'm still broke.

* * *

He shouldn't have laid hands on the prisoner. Not once, and certainly not twice. It was unbecoming of someone in his position.

Hux had always tried to be better than the piece of bantha shit his father had been, in metaphysical revenge. He'd never once struck anyone outside of specific disciplinary settings, and on some level, he cringed at the reaction his behavior during his escape had got him.

His father had always told him about the Imperial officers; how they acted bravely and honorably in all things, and then he thought of the beatings his father had inflicted on him, telling him that he was thrashing the uselessness out of him.

Brendol Hux had been a hypocrite and Armitage Hux did his best not to be.

The reality of Imperial officers barely passed muster: a collection of disappointingly uninspired individuals not greatly different from anyone else. Tarkin was exceptional, but he had always been an exception, and in any case, lackluster reality did not absolve Hux of living up to those standards. What was the point of the First Order, if not that? To be what the Empire had utterly failed to be.

Hux stepped down into the main cabin of the ship. The lights flickered on in response to movement, and he found the prisoner stretched out with her arms pinned above her head, sleeping like the dead.

For a moment he just stared, offended. How dare she get so much sleep when Hux could hardly ever close his eyes for two seconds together? She didn't stir as he crossed the cabin, despite the firm click of his heels.

She didn't wake up until he nudged her ankle with the toe of his boot. Her eyes snapped open, wary and disoriented.

"What do you know about the Unknown Regions?" His voice was clipped and professional.

She groaned faintly and shook her head, then finally let it fall back and thump against the bulkhead, gazing up at him with a wrinkled-up nose. " _Mmghag…huh?_ "

"The Unknown Regions. What do you know about them?"

She scowled as she sat up a little more, leaned back, and yawned. "...They're unknown?"

 _Oh, lovely. It's back:._

"Do not test me," Hux snapped.

"Well, I'm sorry, but that's the truth," she retorted, obviously not sorry at all. "I know the Imperials retreated there, I know that's where the Chiss are from, but otherwise it's all a big mystery. No one knows what happened after Jakku, except that you all reappeared with Starkiller three decades later. Apparently, it's a lot more decentralized than the Empire. Or even the Republic. Uh, the New Republic. It's…I get the sense there isn't a central government. I don't know. I have no fucking clue."

"There isn't a centralized government, at least not in this time, before the Imperials in exile created one. Not at a level that encompassed more than a handful of star systems in constant rivalry with those around them; once or twice we found planets at such a low technology level they had barely gone beyond a heliocentric notion of planetary movement."

"Well, that's officially more than I knew ten seconds ago."

The only person Hux had ever come across more inclined towards such an inadvisable choice of words was Poe Dameron, whose infuriating, laconic grin had smeared itself across the viewscreens of the First Order's Star Destroyers on more than one occasion, a perennial thorn in their side for several years. Hux briefly wondered if the pilot had survived the rout on Yavin IV. He had not gone looking for confirmation, but there were few enough of them left that were left from the future, after all, and the names stuck out when he saw them.

Hux got right to the point. He put his hands behind his back to center himself.

"I need your help."

She froze, her eyebrows twitching together as she lifted her chin, and for several seconds there was absolute silence. Finally, she shut her eyes, and sighed through her nose.

"Jesus— _Invasion of the Bodysnatchers_ , now, huh? Who are you and what have you done with Hux? That pasty little bastard doesn't state his wants and needs like a normal person, and even if he did, it wouldn't be to _me_."

All of his planned sage calm fell out from under him.

"What did you say?" he snapped. "I am General Hux, of the First Order! Who else would I be?"

She opened her eyes and looked back at him, silent, grim—more transparently hateful and even condescending than she ever had before, like she was merely forced to endure his presence, and she was so much better than this, than him.

"No."

"'No'?"

"No, I won't help you."

"How dare you! You could be—"

" _No._ "

He'd always relied upon his rank status to command authority. Shouted to assert himself. Hux had been at this game for so long he no longer remembered his life before uniforms and ranks and regulations. Soldiers who disobeyed orders from a superior officer were subject to severe punishment. The concept of the need to convince someone was almost anathema; one did not cajole a Stormtrooper into going into battle. Still, Hux was not entirely unused to the notion of...drawing out the kind of behavior he wanted. He had always been very good at making the other party see his version of events in a very beneficial light.

 _Stick to the plan_.

Hux stared at her steadily, then knelt and reached forward, and over her head. She watched him and didn't move, though she was stiff as a board.

The stuncuffs loosed with a hiss; he held himself ready in case she attacked. He was still armed with a knife and blaster, and while he'd never been a talent at hand-to-hand combat, had applied himself with his usual focus and was more than capable.

She didn't scramble away, or attack. She merely tucked her arms up against her chest and rubbed at her wrists, watching him as he settled back into his previous attitude.

Her eyes flicked to his feet and back to his face.

"Precisely what is it you need my help with?"

"You have no love for the Empire."

"What?" She scoffed, and narrowed her eyes at him. "Well, at the moment, their hospitality appears preferable."

"You don't believe that."

"Do I not?" she retorted, icily. "Is there a point to this conversation?"

"Do you mean to tell me that you are secretly an Imperial sympathizer? If so, I might have thought you would have been more willing to give up secrets." He kept his voice more dry than cutting.

She raised an eyebrow, unimpressed. "Let's put it this way: I have even less love for you."

"Were it not for me, you would be in Tarkin's hands right now."

Hux didn't miss the subtle, terrified flinch in her shoulders, though her expression didn't falter. She stared at him in angry, cold silence, long enough that Hux filled the void himself.

"Do you want vengeance? For your friends. For the Rebellion?"

She blinked.

" _You_ want to offer me _vengeance?_ Now I know you're full of shit."

"I will give it to you. Help me, and I will deliver you your revenge."

"I fail to see how that could possibly work out," she said, at last, her voice a chilly and clipped series of very precise syllables. "Vengeance for me means the absolute defeat of the autocracy that you want to create. That's the only vengeance I want. The _only_ one that's fitting."

"I have had something of a come-to-the-Maker epiphany," Hux said, only half lying. _No need to tell her precise details_. "I want your expertise. I offer you mine. We can work together."

"You've suddenly become a huge fan of democracy?" she said, sarcastic.

 _Not a chance in seven Corellian hells_.

"Yes."

She laughed once, suddenly and unexpectedly.

It wasn't important, however. Hux felt certain that, especially with Kylo Ren's help, he was perfectly capable of keeping this woman on a tight leash.

"Your expertise? Your expertise in what?"

"In military command."

"You have no expertise except maybe scheming," she replied flatly. "Snoke only kept around because you're useful, but not because of some steel trap of a military mind. You're not an idiot—but you're barely qualified to lead a trip to the grocery store, let alone head an entire military campaign against something like the Empire at its most powerful. You, beat Tarkin? You wouldn't last a fucking hour! Not by trying to make statements, like you did with Starkiller, and at D'Qar. And if I have to sit here and explain why—"

He had only the barest memory now of what she'd said he was supposed to have done with either, but Hux, _enraged_ at her persistent and egregious lack of respect, slapped her, hard enough that her head snapped to the side, to remind her of exactly where she stood.

"That's enough," he said, firmly.

She sagged, dazed for a moment, and when she looked up at him again it was with a cold, dead stare, and a smear of blood across her chin, her jaw tightly clenched, lips pressed thin.

"Now...I know the Unknown Regions," Hux grit out, forging through in spite of the both of them. "And I know what's out there. You don't. And...I believe we're of an age." He needed to gain her willing cooperation if this was to work. If he forced it, she would bare her fangs and bury them in his throat at the first opportunity. He had made up his mind; if she refused him, she would not be given the chance to betray him.

She reached up, touched her split lip, and licked at the blood a little. When she spoke, she was calmer.

"Yeah, but I at least listen to what my elders have to say before I write them off. And second of all, I get a handicap: this shit is written down in plain language where I'm from. The Chiss are out there, but the Chiss certainly won't rally to your cause. I should ask—what is your cause? Specifically, and boiled down to brass tacks, no bullshit?"

"The destruction of the Empire."

She raised both eyebrows almost to her hairline. "Ooo-kay. _Right_. Assuming I believe you—You and what army?"

"There are forces within the Unknown Region which we can bring to bear. And…Kylo Ren."

"Kylo Ren who's been missing since Grandpa Vader crushed his hopes and dreams Kylo Ren?"

"I know where he is."

She blinked as shock suffused her features. She sat up a little. "What? You do?"

"I've known Kylo Ren for fifteen standard years, almost half his life—I know him as well as any."

"So—I—then the Empire knows where he is, too?" She frowned. "Won't they be looking for him? I mean—what about the Inquisitors?"

"They might be looking for him, but if they know where he is, they didn't learn from me."

"Well…where is he?"

"If you agree to help me, then I'll tell you where we're going."

She shot a hard side-eyed look at him.

"Why make any such promise when I'll be around to see where we're going?"

"Will you?" he asked. "I would prefer to have your help—but I can do without. All it will mean is that we continue our previous _relationship_ apace. I suppose you will see where we're headed, for the scant minutes before I eject you into high orbit."

"Provided you can get me into an airlock in the first place," she retorted. " _Can_ you control me, if I've got nothing else to lose?"

The knife seemed to materialize in his hand, but the reality was it was a practiced gesture, one as familiar to him as breathing. She watched, woodenly, and very swiftly alert.

"Is that poisoned?"

"Of course not," Hux retorted. "Poisoned knives are for assassins who aren't very good at their job. Believe you me, I am quite capable of keeping you in line. My blaster is useless to you, it is coded to me specifically, and is equipped with both kill and stun settings."

She sat there for a moment, still watching the blade, frowning a little. She finally shook her head.

"Oh, what the hell. I haven't got any other pressing engagements. Can I get up now, or are you going to continue looming over me and sticking a knife in my face?"

"I am not looming over you," Hux corrected her, rising smoothly to his feet in a rustle of lightly charred gaberwool. He briefly considered offering her his hand as she stood up, mostly as a humanizing gesture that might appeal to her on the level of courtesy, but he opted out. She didn't seem to think much of _gesture_. "And I did not stick a knife in your face."

"Says the ginger, as he looms over me and just whipped a knife out of hammerspace so he could wave it around in front of my nose," she retorted, looked him up and down again—and swept past, and gave him her back. _The kriffing cheeky cunt_. "Oh and let's not forget, you slapped me again. You're like a fucking ginger Loki, except your batshit crazy isn't mischievous, it's genocidal. Well, whatever, I guess I'm stuck on this crazy train. May I know where we're headed now, Fearless Leader?"

He watched her, irked but not entirely disheartened. He didn't care to speculate on the strange things that came out of her mouth. She had odd swearing habits, but aside from a bizarre conviction that _caf_ was called _kah-fee_ , the differences between their use of language was trivial and superfluous.

"Tatooine."

Her about-face was unexpectedly crisp, and she faced him with an appalled look.

"Tatooine? That's your great insight? _Tatooine_. Do you really think—"

"There are things you do not know. Circumstances have…radically changed. Because of that, it's primarily your insight into individuals and places I'm interested in now, not events."

"Oh? What? Aside from the fact that you're clearly not getting on with Tarkin anymore like you've died and gone to space fascist heaven, what's happened? Please enlighten me!" She held out a hand invitingly and waited with her other one cocked on her hip.

So Hux told her the outcome. Let her come to him, from there.

"Kenobi is still alive—Obi-Wan Kenobi. I'm sure you know who that is. He took Luke Skywalker and his moisture farmer family into hiding."

Finally—finally—a look of something besides scorn and irritation filled her face. She blinked, and her hands went limp at her sides. She stared at him in abject astonishment. It was delicious to sit there and finally have one up on the prisoner. She was obnoxiously secure in her own knowledge, and it almost made him smile to watch her struggle, unable to neither predict nor deduct.

"So—hold up, what? When did this happen? _How_ did this happen? Why would Kylo even _be_ on Tatooine if..."

"I believe Kylo Ren might be attempting to locate Luke Skywalker."

She stared at him, then scoffed, then rubbed at the bridge of her nose with a longsuffering sigh.

"Oh God, _please_ just drop me off at the nearest Imperial base," she muttered under her breath. "Is it cliché to say I have a bad feeling about this?"


	4. Chapter 4

Okay so, chapter 4. Don't worry guys, this is NOT in any sense a Hux/OFC. It is absolutely a Kylux piece, so even though absolutely NONE OF THIS was written to imply that possibility, I just wanted to reiterate that.

I don't own shit or I swear to you we'd be getting Gingerpilot or Kylux as canon. Possibly Hux/Rose because crackilicious crackdom.

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*break*

It startled Hux when the woman appeared in the cockpit holding a box.

He looked up from his figures. There were certain compensatory calculations that could be made to account for the movement of bodies in space over the course of time when plotting hyperspace trajectories, and he would need to get them perfectly right in the navicomputer before risking a jump from known space into the Unknown Regions. He preferred to get the course worked out before Tatooine, just in case they needed to make a hasty exit.

All business, said, "Do you mind? I can't read this. What is it?"

"Tarine tea," Hux said—then jerked to life. "Where did you find that?" Suddenly his throat was parched, and his head pounded for the lack of caffeine in his system. He hadn't known Kylo Ren stocked tarine tea on his ship.

"There's a mini-kitchen in a cabinet back there," she said. "It's got a little hot water dispenser and some weird green pellet-things in vacuum packs. Actually…I think they called them portions? I might try to add some water to one, see what happens. There's also some things in boxes. So this is tea? Alright, do you want any?"

She was talking about emergency Imperial rations, but far be it from him to bother telling her. "I beg your pardon?"

"I asked if you wanted any tea."

"No doubt you would fail to make it properly," Hux snapped. " _I_ will make the tea."

She raised an eyebrow and handed him the box as he stood up, then followed him at a distance into the tiny berthing that was barely large enough to hold a bed and a tiny refresher, more of a tube large enough for one person to stand inside that slid shut. She had found the kitchenette.

"The First Order excels at one thing," she remarked, almost to herself. "If literally nothing else."

Hux was about to tell her off, but she continued blithely.

"Cleaning. It's almost creepy how perfect everything is. Like…it's a wonder anyone ever got to anything else. I feel like someone peeled off the plastic five minutes ago."

Was it a problem that he'd so quickly become used to her running commentary and, most importantly, tuning it out? Well, Hux was nothing if not a fast learner. "The First Order prides itself on its professional appearance."

She said nothing but took a seat on the bed as Hux went about his business, running hot water into two of the cups stored in the cabinet. He handed her one when he was done, and she sipped at it.

"It would be better with milk," she remarked, grimacing. "I would kill for Earl Grey."

 _What kind of cretin ruins good tarine tea with milk_. "What is Earl Grey?"

"Ubiquitous, but still my favorite," she sighed. "This is still pretty good, though." She blew on it a little and then sipped again. "What's the ETA on Tatooine?"

"We'll come out of hyperspace in less than two hours," Hux said. "Where should we set down on the planet? Where should we look?"

"You're asking me and this is _your_ plan?"

"This is your purpose. I know nothing about the planet, only that it's a perennial fascination of Ren's."

"Then what the hell makes you think he'd even be there?!"

"Because it's a p...Have you got any better ideas?" Hux sneered, too annoyed to explain himself. "Well? No? Then do make yourself _useful!_ "

She glared at him, unimpressed, but sat back and thought about it a moment.

"You said earlier that Kenobi's disappeared with Luke and his family, right? Well, if I were investigating their disappearance itself, I'd say start by checking the scene of the crime as it were—the Lars household. If, er, we can find it. Obi-Wan's house, too."

"Is there a city nearby? We could ask if anyone has heard anything."

"The Empire has a presence in the Outer Rim and we haven't got any fucking Jedis around to wave their hands and say _this isn't the ginger you're looking for_." She gave some vague hand gesture that apparently meant something to her. "If you do that, we're fucked. Might as well put a giant sign on our heads with _hello here I am please come get me_. In marquee lights." She took another sip of tea. "Mm. This could grow on you."

"Much unlike yourself."

She put a hand to her chest. "All three of my feelings, they're so hurt. I have a question."

"I would prefer you did not ask it."

"What do you hope to get out of finding Kylo Ren? What is he supposed to do for you? Do you _have_ a plan? Like, a big-picture plan?"

"I have already told you. My intention is to rally forces in the Unknown Region."

"Yeah, you said that before," she said. "I find that plan vague and unconvincing. Why would they follow you and why would they go after the Empire? What kind of allies, what do you plan to do, I mean?"

"That is not your part to play in this," he snapped. "You are not a military commander."

"Maybe not, but I _do_ read a lot of history books. History, politics, and war—they're like an uroboros of mutually inescapable fuckery. More than one military campaign was done in by shit planning or bad politics. More than one victory in the field was fucked in the long run because no one planned for the after party. And now the Death Star can't be destroyed. Tarkin's wrong when he thinks it will be enough to command silence and obedience; the use of that weapon will wreak unpredictable and unmanageable shockwaves, but—"

"I see you fancy yourself an expert."

"—If you win, you'll make the same mistake the Rebellion did."

Hux went white with rage.

"What did you say?"

She sighed through her nose. "The Rebellion, as are virtually all idealists no matter where you are on the political spectrum, left or right, religious or secular, was afflicted with the entirely yawn-inducing conviction that it's a lack of conviction that leads to system failure. Well _of course_ that's true, if not everyone agrees hard enough! How simple it all is! You just need to believe _properly_ and it will all fall into place! Failure becomes not an objective flaw of what's been done itself that can be evaluated and reevaluated, it's the fault of someone not believing in it enough or in the right way. To say that a particular conviction leads to particular action and therefore a particular outcome is nothing but a superficial observation that's beside the point in real terms. And it's stupid _because_ it's got nothing to say about what makes people tick. It gives no one any reason to give a damn, nor lends any insight into why not everyone does give a damn the same way, or why they can't give up an objectively bad idea. And it invariably leads to things getting even more fucked up."

"I didn't know you were so critical of the Rebellion."

She gave him another dead-eyed stare. "Trust me, it's not just the Rebellion. You told me that you wanted my help. Well, do you? Because I'm trying. Take it or leave it, but I'm trying. This is my job."

He didn't recall asking for her insipid social commentaries. "And what is your job?"

"Aside from being a walking encyclopedia? I look at things and pick them apart." She sighed. "I do it for both sides, and if I can't, then I'm worthless. Isn't this what you want? Answers? Insights? Do you have any idea of where to take what you're trying to do? You still haven't convinced me that you have an actual plan!"

"I was hardly aware you were capable of any such thing."

"Nobody ever asked," she grit back snidely.

"Why offer it now?"

"To the degree that I can, having been put in this position, I'd like to have a real plan in mind for what you imagine the post-war galaxy to look like. You need to have a long-term plan!""

"I can hardly be expected to have a long-term plan when I don't yet have an order of battle!"

She clenched her jaw. "So what's your plan for getting one of those? What do you anticipate?"

"I need Kylo Ren," he said flatly.

"I don't understand why Kylo Ren is such a game-changer. Why do you need him? And hell while I'm at it, why is everyone so convinced that Force-users are such game-changers when—"

"You do not understand what I will be able to bring to bear!"

"No! I don't! _Because you refuse to tell me!_ "

"You have no need to know. All you need to do is to tell me what I want to hear. I don't care about the politics. This is _war_." And he didn't trust her. Whatever else she was, she was a clever little beast. if she didn't absolutely need to know something, he wasn't keen on telling her.

"At what point is politics divorced from war?"

"When the shooting starts," Hux hissed back. "That is when politics is divorced from war."

"How is that not politics with different tools? And even if it's not, I bet you're going to have to play politics to get an army!"

"You are unfamiliar with these groups. I am not."

"I acknowledge that," she said stridently, rising from the bed. She was shorter, but she got close enough that she had to crane her neck back to stare into his face. "I acknowledge that you know a great deal more about what we're going to face. But if you want me here as some kind of barometer-slash-adviser—"

"Do not overreach," Hux barked back. "You're only here because otherwise you'd be licking Tarkin's boot, because that is what _you_ do. You survive, no matter who has your leash. All you need to do is tell me the things I want to know, when I want to hear them. And other than that, keep your kriffing mouth shut."

She scoffed at him in disbelief, but threw up her hands.

" _Fine_."

She took her tea and stomped out of the cabin. There was nowhere for her to go, and he heard her sit down with a huff out in the main compartment.

Hux looked down at his tea, and sat down on the bed in her place to gather his thoughts.

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*break*

is getting on my nerves with their weird not-break break things.


End file.
